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Join DCI Jim Foley from Metropolitan Police at the Domestic Abuse Roundtable Event to discuss investigating domestic abuse, rape offenses, stalking, victim behaviors, offender behaviors, and positive actions to combat domestic violence.
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Domestic Abuse (DA) Roundtable Event DCI Jim Foley Metropolitan Police
Agenda 1. The difficulties of investigating Domestic Abuse. 2. The difficulties of investigating Domestic Abuse Rape offences. 3. Stalking and harassment
What is Domestic Abuse? • … any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality. • The abuse can encompass, but is not limited to psychological; physical; sexual; financial or emotional.
Coercive and controlling behaviour • Controlling behaviour is certain acts designed to make a person subordinate and/or dependent by isolating them from sources of support, exploiting their resources and capacities for personal gain, depriving them of the means for independence, resistance and escape and regulating their everyday behaviour. • Coercive behaviour is acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm punish or frighten their victim.
Domestic Abuse Victim Behaviours The most commonly asked question: Why don’t they just leave? What does a victim hope to gain from leaving? • Safety for themselves and any children • Self respect • Self confidence • A chance for a new start • Control over their life • Improved health
What does a victim face losing if they leave? • Home • Possessions • Job (either because they have moved or because it is an easy way to be found) • Father/mother for the children • Status (as a wife/husband, particularly important in religious communities where divorce still carries a stigma) • Any hope that things will work out • A partner that at one time at least, they loved and for whom they may still have feelings of care • Finances • Friends and family • Pets • Their routine (this includes all the things that make up your day-to-day life - your exercise class, the children's school, the garden you have lovingly tended, your GP, dentist, the local shops where you are known etc) • Children (this is statistically unlikely but they will invariably have been threatened with this by the abuser and so it will form part of their decision-making process)
Offender Behaviour Perpetrators often seek to down play the impact of their abuse and fail to admit or acknowledge the extent of the harm that they cause. This can take many forms: • Complete denial; • Inclusion (perpetrators include only abuse that has become public) • Forgetting, blanking out and ‘not knowing’; • Normalising (presenting behaviour as if it was not important) • Using the children as part of coercive control • Denying the impact on children (evidence suggests that in 90 percent of domestic assaults, children are in the same or next room) • Denying that they have responsibility, instead blaming the victim or other problems, such as substance misuse, stress, or mental illness • In a HMIC review of 600 domestic assault case files, there was a counter-allegation made in 30% of the cases. Often the women the HMIC spoke to described how calm and plausible the perpetrator appeared to be on arrival of the police
